Obama takes tougher stance on higher education
Colleges that don't rein in costs will face grant cuts
Washington: Access to college has been the driving force in federal higher education policy for decades. But the Obama administration is pushing a fundamental agenda shift that brings a new question into the debate: What are people getting for their money?
Students with loans are graduating on average with more than $25,000 (Dh91,828) in debt. The federal government pours $140 billion annually into federal grants and loans. Unemployment remains high, yet there are shortages in many industries with some high-tech companies complaining about a lack of highly trained workers.
Meanwhile, literacy among college students has declined in the last decade, according to a commission convened during the George W. Bush administration. About 40 per cent of college students at four-year schools aren't graduating, and in two-year programmes, only about 40 per cent of students graduate or transfer, according to the policy and analysis group, College Measures.
About a fifth of full-time students who enroll at a community college do not return for a second year, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to an analysis released last fall by the American Institutes for Research.
Not a luxury
During his State of the Union address, Obama put the higher education on notice: "If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down," he said. "Higher education can't be a luxury — it's an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford."
He wants to slightly reduce federal aid for schools that don't control tuition costs and shift it to those that do. He has also proposed an $8 billion programme to train community college students for high-growth industries.
